Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Duke: Haughty Arrogance, Rather Than Humble Cooperation

In this country’s legal system, one is indeed innocent until proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilty, by a jury of his or her peers. If charges are filed against members of Duke Lacrosse for the rape and sexual assault of a young black woman, they should have a fair trail, without a media circus that surrounds events that have generated such national coverage.

However, it is with the utmost disgust that this author must comment on some of the atrocious stories that are coming out of Duke, due to this firestorm. A recent Associated Press report tries to diffuse some of the controversy over the alleged rape and subsequent charges of Duke being a privileged white haven by focusing on some of the community outreach attempts by Duke University to aid the city of Durham [1]. However, the facts are clear. The same night as the rape, a different woman called 9-11 in tears, after having a racial slur hurled her way. A car in the neighbor was defaced with the letters “KKK.” An eyewitness reports that the alleged female rape victim soon found herself surrounded by forty-odd drunken males, shouting racial slurs. Someone from the party yelled “Hey bitch. Thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt.”[2] Moments later, the woman found herself dragged into a bathroom, raped, and beaten and choked. The horrific episode lasted approximately thirty minutes.

In the aftermath of the whole thing, it took the police three days to finally get around to searching the house. It took Duke two weeks to suspend the team. Meanwhile Duke students have gone on record to make absurdly naive statements, along the lines of “I don’t think its, like, fair that Duke gets a bad rep for a rape or a beating or two. Everyone is different and unique! We’re not all like that!.*” Duke sophomore Amy O’Sullivan readily admits that the Duke Lacrosse team is at the top of the university’s social hierarchy. Why? “Because they’re hot!” muses her classmate Julie Blessing. “And they throw, like, the best parties.” [3].

Yes, the best parties indeed. One party included young female co-eds wrestling in a blow-up pool filled with bath oil while their drunken male counterparts shouted lewd remarks and cheered them on. And a few weeks ago, at another one of these highly acclaimed events, a young 27-year old woman was forced to endure physical and sexual humiliation amid an environment of disgusting racial intolerance and male chauvinism.

The fact is that, yes Duke is being blasted by the local community. But the university has been quick to cover up, and slow to care. Slow to care that a young woman may have been violated, that a community may have been irresponsibly divided Slow to care that a team of its students remains complacent in allowing this to take place.. Not a single member of the lacrosse team has ventured information, or even cooperation. And when a local resident expressed her opinion in the local papers, she received a phone call.

Duke deserves every single bit of scorn that the local community can muster until the University puts its moral and social responsibilities above the relatively petty interests of its athletic teams, and its over-privileged student body. For in the aftermath of the assault, it was the Duke Lacrosse coach Mike Pressler who said, “All our focus is on beating the Hoyas now” [5]. And with that, Pressler revealed how crass and heartless Duke and Duke Lacrosse actually are.

-E. Desiderius

*Quote invented for effect.**Name not reported to protect the individual.